Though I doubt if Bjoernson has, in this type, caught the
soul of a Norse woman of the saga age, he has come much nearer to
catching it than any of his predecessors. If Gudrun Osvif's Daughter, of
the Laxdoela Saga, was his model, he has modernized her considerably,
and thereby made her more intelligible to modern readers. Like her,
Hulda causes the murder of the man she loves; and there is a fateful
spell about her beauty which brings death to whomsoever looks too long
upon it. Though ostensibly a saga-drama, the harshness and grim ferocity
of that sanguinary period are softened; and a romantic illumination
pervades the whole action. A certain lyrical effusiveness in the love
passages (which is alien to all Bjoernson's later works) hints at the
influence of the Danish Romanticists, and particularly Oehlenschlaeger.
It would be unfair, perhaps, to take the author to task because this
youthful drama exhibits no remarkable subtlety in its conception of
character. It contains no really great living figure who stands squarely
upon his feet and lingers in the memory.
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